Hall thrusters were developed and studied in the past 40-45 years, till 1992—mainly in the former Soviet Union and after 1992—in the west as well. Over 200 Hall thrusters have been flown on Soviet or Russian satellites in the last thirty years. This technology was used on the European Lunar mission SMART-1 and is used on a number of commercial geostationary satellites.
A worldwide effort is presently being invested in the developments of micro- and nano-spacecraft propelled using advanced electric propulsion engines. The evaluations and experiments carried out up to now show that attempts to solve this problem face considerable difficulties, which had not yet been overcome (reviews are attached herein as references: “Micropropulsion for Small Spacecraft”/Edited by M. M. Micci and A. D. Ketsdever, Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics, vol. 187, 477 p., 2000.
Among the electric rocket engines that are considered as the candidates for application on micro- and nano-spacecraft, Hall thrusters occupy a prominent place. This is due to the following factors:    1. At large and moderate powers, Hall thrusters possess the highest efficiency at specific impulses of 1200-2500 s, and principal limitations are absent for providing the competitiveness of the thrusters of this type at significantly higher specific impulses;    2. Owing to intensive investigations over a long period of time, the physics of Hall thruster has been clarified to a greater degree than other plasma engines. This fact leads to search for ways of building effective thrusters of small power a noticeably easier problem.However, in the case of Hall thruster, operation at powers of 50-250 W, as needed to propel micro- and nano-spacecraft, leads to such strong lifetime limitations, raising doubts upon the possibility of creating small power Hall thrusters with high performance using a conventional design.